Officers staged unwarranted stops of women in an abuse of power known as “booty patrols”, with crimes such as sexual assault covered up and ignored along with large-scale harassment of female officers and members of the public.
The report published on Wednesday from His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) for England and Wales was ordered after the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard in March 2021 by a serving Metropolitan police officer, Wayne Couzens.
It details senior officers pursuing women for sex, the watching of pornography on duty and misogynistic comments about crime victims and the public.
The report lists a decade of warnings to police chiefs after past serious sexual assaults and abuses of power by serving officers, with the inspectorate finding that chiefs were “complacent” and failed to appreciate “the danger to the public”.
Officers were cleared to join after “committing offences such as robbery, indecent exposure, possession of controlled drugs, drink-driving and domestic abuse-related assaults”, the report found.
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Every female police officer and staff member spoke to told of harassment and, in some cases, assaults.
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This report follows one last month by Lady Casey into the Met’s discipline system that found shocking failures, corruption and cover-ups far greater than previously admitted. It led the Met’s commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, to say that hundreds of racist, women-hating and corrupt officers have been left in the ranks of his force alone.
“Failures,” right…